New Year's Resolutions

Polaroids may make you the life of the party, but rumors of reprints will earn you friendly calls long after the party's over. Digital photography now offers the best of both worlds--combining the immediacy of a Polaroid with the endurance and flexibility of film.

Digital cameras equipped with an LCD allow you to view captured moments instantly. And you can share digital photos just as easily as you would double prints from a drugstore: Simply e-mail your pictures to friends or post them on the Web. Commercial interests are also well served by digital photography. Real estate and e-commerce companies now routinely use digitally captured images of properties and products on the Web.

And thanks to recent technological advances, today's digital cameras produce better-looking pictures than their predecessors did a year ago--while costing less on average. All but 5 of the 20 products we review here offer a maximum resolution of at least 1152 by 864, or about one million pixels; 4 of them crack the 2-megapixel (two million or higher pixels) ceiling. Better still, prices for 1-megapixel models now begin at $299. Of the 4 that are truly 2-megapixel, $699 is the cheapest. A year ago prices for low-end cameras started at $399.

How much resolution you need in a digital camera depends on how you intend to use it. If you plan to view snapshots on a monitor or post them on a Web page, a 1-megapixel model will suffice. But keep in mind that you may need to set your monitor's resolution to at least 1152 by 864 to view the entire image at 100 percent. To view a 2-megapixel photo at 100 percent, you'll need a display resolution of at least 1600 by 1200.

If you want to print your digital photos on 8-by-10-inch paper, consider a 2-megapixel model. The additional pixels will give you sharper, more vivid prints.

Despite the bounty of pixels, the 20 models we tested vary widely in their capability to accurately capture color and detail. In fact, our one-page contact sheet of a still-life test might pass for a Sherwin-Williams color chart.